Somebody asked me recently to share one tool for maintaining equilibrium during particularly stressful times. She told me that earlier in the day she had thrown her hands in the air, succumbing to a mini melt-down, certain she’d never make it through the next two weeks with her sanity intact. We had an entire coaching session around it- she had all of those tools right there inside of her- and her stress turned out to be powerful fuel for transforming some stuck energy that was begging to shift.
I’ve read more books in the area of coaching and transpersonal psychology than I can list, but the title that popped into my head during that conversation was a book I read over ten years ago during a particularly powerful period of stuckness in my own life. Generally when a book title pops into my head for the first time in a decade, I trust my inner wisdom and pass on the title, just in case it resonates with my client at any given time. If not, that’s okay too.
After having this recollection, I meandered to my bookshelf to reconnect with this gem which is called, The Little Book of Letting Go by Hugh Prather. I smiled, remembering how it brought me comfort during that time as a stressed-out 29 year-old feeling the impending passage into my thirties, which at the time freaked me out a little (okay… a lot). I thumbed through the pages to remind myself of the author’s strategy for guiding his readers through their mini-meltdowns and I remembered why I loved the book.
According to Mr. Prather, there are three easy steps to letting go of our chronic patterns of stress. The first one being:
To remove what obstructs your experience of wholeness and peace, you must first look at the obstruction.
I remember that’s what I did over ten years ago when I read this book. At that time, I put the book down, went to my to-do board, and began purging all of the “stressors” competing for my attention. I omitted everything without a deadline, because sometimes you just have to ignore the dust on the furniture, the dog hair along the floor boards, and the accumulating laundry. After including everything I could think of, I found that the simple act of visualizing the entire blockage in writing helped release some of the frazzle. Suddenly I found myself morphing from the role of victim (I have all of this stuff I have to accomplish in so little time) to one of organized control. (I can do this…)
This brought me to the second step, which was:
To go beyond the obstruction, you must be certain that you want to.
In other words, did I truly want peace? Or was I learning to thrive on uncomfortable chaos? That question isn’t as silly as it sounds. Not only are millions of people stuck in a pattern of chaos, they come to actually crave it. (For a great explanation of this, Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief is brilliant.) At the time, I felt I truly wanted peace. If a person truly wants peace, they will do whatever they can to take that first step- whatever that may look like- to shift out of the stuck pattern that is causing discord in their life.
And the final step:
To experience your wholeness, you must respond from your whole mind and not from your conflicted mind.
This means responding from that place where we feel a quiet and loving connection to all people and all things. Our higher consciousness, our sacredness. A place free from the tumultuous waters of our manufactured egoic storms, without the unsure footing based on a crumbling foundation of fictional worries and the desire to control unseen forces.
Easier said than done, right? (That’s what transformation’s all about.)
After flipping through this old classic on my bookshelf, I was reminded of a very important knowing. Spiritual comfort and psychological ease is never free. It’s not bestowed upon us with no effort invested. In my own life, every time I start to settle into a place of distracted apathy, where tranquility is taken for granted, I suffer for it. It takes a little work, a little (gasp) structure, to get back on track.
And a big thank you to the dear person who triggered this post, who was thrilled to be able to share a tiny sliver of her process for the possible wellbeing of others. 🙂
Leave a Comment